No One Writes Back

by Jang Eun-jin

  I lie face down on the bed with a blanket wrapped around me, and barely manage to pick up a pencil. The lead, however, is broken. I take out a pencil sharpener from my backpack and rotate the pencil. Wood shavings come rolling up like lace. To be honest, pencils are something of a hassle at times like this. Still, I always stick to pencils when it comes to writing letters. Pens make me nervous, because errors can’t be erased. Pencils always forgive you even when you make mistakes. Completely, too. So letters should be written in pencil. That’s my long-held belief.

  Dear Father,

  I got caught in the rain today and have come down with a bad cold. Maybe that’s why I felt prompted to write you. I can just about imagine what you’d say if you saw me. Stupid boy! You caught a cold in the middle of the summer, when even a dog doesn’t. Tsk-tsk. And then you’d go down to your basement laboratory, where no light comes in, and make something in the blink of an eye, as if by magic. As if only making something would solve the problem.

  You were always that way, Father. The greatest of your inventions were all created when there was a serious or ugly problem at home. They were like mold, feeding on the unhappy energy of our family. There were too many of them, almost grossly so, to call it a coincidence. From some time on, I began to feel uncomfortable about even touching your inventions, because there was something disturbing about them. As the mold multiplied, I loathed you more and more, Father, so that I could hardly bear it. I also thought you were incompetent. I resented you for not being able to handle even a single problem at home as the head of the family.

  I thought you had a list of things to invent written out in advance, and took them from the list and made them one by one whenever a problem arose. I thought they were excuses for you to get yourself out of vexing problems. You shut yourself up in your laboratory and struggled with dozens of designs until you succeeded. Whenever you came running out of the laboratory, with your invention in hand and shouting “Eureka!” the problem would already have been completely worked out by Mother and the three of us. Do you know what occurred to me later, even? That you wanted something bad to happen at home, so that you’d be able to invent something great. Because that’s what gave you the ability to concentrate on your research. As a result, each of the inventions that have brought you renown has a story behind them.

  I confess at last, I was the one who broke the ventilator you built with great ambition, to submit to the Geneva International Invention Exposition. Older Brother knew, but he took the blame for me. I remember how you beat him to a pulp. He lost two of his front teeth, which made him look like an idiot. I thought since you loved him so much, nothing would happen if he said he was the one who broke it. That morning at dawn, I saw you crying for the first time. Do you remember what you said when I went into the laboratory? You said that the ventilator wasn’t just a ventilator, but his heart.

  It was when Older Brother was undergoing a heart surgery that the design for the ventilator was completed. You believed that the reason why the surgery went successfully was because you had completed the design. Then you told me about each of the inventions you had come up with up to that point. Things that were created when Mother was facing the risk of expulsion from school, when Jiyun was getting her nose job, when Grandfather lost his sight, when I was taking my college entrance exam . . . I learned at last that there was a subtitle for each of the inventions. You remembered everything, even the little things that the rest of us had forgotten, as though you had worked out all the problems at home by yourself. As I thought about it, I realized that the problems that were at hand when you had succeeded in creating your inventions had all been successfully resolved. Older Brother’s heart, too, was beating without a problem, thanks to the ventilator. It was a magic spell that was yours alone.

  To you, Father, invention was like cooking. Just as Mother cooked up food in the kitchen, you came up with the most fantastic things in the basement as though you were cooking. It seemed that to you, inventing something was as simple as frying an egg. There was nothing you couldn’t make at our request, and nothing you couldn’t fix. Thanks to you, Father, we were able to lead a comfortable life. When you quit your job as a physics teacher and declared you were going to be a full-fledged inventor, you persuaded Mother with the sweet words that you’d make a robot to clean for her. Until you succeeded in making such a robot, of course, you had to serve as one yourself. You were pretty good at cooking, too, probably because you were someone who invented things the way people cooked. This is a secret, but you were better at cooking than Mother was.

  And how fantastic were the toys you made. They were special, on an entirely different level from the plastic toys that other kids played with. Your airplanes flew in the sky, your cars ran on the highway, and your rockets were launched far out into outer space. They were all one of a kind, and so I, too, could be one of a kind. Thanks to that, I passed my childhood without much trouble. I know, of course, that you made more toys for me than for Older Brother, and better ones, too, because I stuttered.

  I remember what you said in an interview with a science magazine. When asked what your greatest invention in life was, you answered without hesitation that it was your three children. Jiyun, being immature, grumbled saying that you should’ve done a better job of inventing your only daughter and youngest child, but she’ll mature as she grows older. Reading the interview, I can’t tell you how proud I was to be your son. I’m sure that Older Brother and Jiyun feel the same way.

  Will you make me something great, Father, so that I may return home safely after this journey? Knowing you, I think you might be waiting for me with something already prepared. I can’t wait to go and see what it is. I’m sure that your magic spell will work as always, Father. Maybe it’s working already, because I seem to be feeling a little better. Take care you don’t catch a cold, Father. The basement at home is unusually cold, even in the middle of summer. I’ll write again.

  Your son Jihun, from Motel Arabian

  55. There’s something that my inventor father always used to say. “The past is always consecrated for the present, and the present is always sacrificed for the future.” Just as the words say, the today that is sacrificed will make tomorrow shine brightly. Thinking that, I put the letter in an envelope and seal it.

  56. My eyes open slightly, as though in a dream, at the sound of knocking on the door. My mind is so confused that I can’t tell whether it’s a dream or reality. My whole body is drenched in sweat, and I can’t move at all even when I try to raise myself up, as if I’m having a terrible nightmare. I want to speak, but no words come out. The sound of knocking comes again, faintly. Who’s disturbing someone else’s sacred sleep in the middle of the night? It must be a guest staying in another room, who has come to the wrong door. Thinking he’ll leave soon, I pull up the blanket over my head with heavy hands and try to go back to sleep. But this time, I hear the sound of a key unlocking the door. And then the person bolts in through the door and shakes me awake. Startled by the forced entry, I leap up from the bed as though the shackles that had been binding me have come undone. I can’t tell who the intruder is because of the dazzling light. Only after a while can I make them out: the receptionist and the woman.

  “You startled us. Are you all right?” the receptionist asks.

  I was the one who was startled, and I’m not all right.

  I rub my eyes and ask, “It’s the middle of the night—what’s going on?”

  “It’s time for you to check out, but we didn’t hear you getting ready, so we wondered if . . .” the receptionist trails off.

  “Time to check out?” I ask.

  I narrow my eyes and look at my watch. It’s well past noon. I’d slept in, unaware of the sun, high in the sky. The woman looks quite shaken, too, and the receptionist looks at me with great relief on her face. Then she says that she’d been paying us extra attention because she sensed something odd when we got separate rooms. It seems that there had been several accidents at this mo
tel. She asks me to check out and returns to the desk. I’m so shaken that I feel drained, and can’t even stay sitting up. I collapse back onto the bed.

  “Aren’t you going to check out?” the woman asks.

  “I don’t think I should today. I’ve come down with a cold. I’m feeling a little better than I did yesterday, but it might last longer if I strain myself.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “What, are you going to get me medicine or something?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks, but it’s okay. I’ll be all right if I rest for a day. You could send this off for me, though,” I say, handing her the letter I’d placed at my bedside.

  “Oh, I need to make a phone call, too. No, I’ll do that myself later. In any case . . .”

  “Could you buy something for Wajo to eat on your way back? Here’s my wallet,” I say.

  She takes the wallet, and takes her cell phone out of her pocket and hands it to me. For a moment, the cell phone seems like the most wonderful, convenient thing in the world. It is like the temptation of the serpent. Should I take it, or shouldn’t I? Taking courage from what she said about traveling meaning becoming indebted, I take it in the end. She leaves the room.

  Panting for breath, I call my friend.

  He says in a wide-awake voice, “Why are you moaning? You’re not doing a live broadcast, are you?”

  “I’m not in the mood to joke around.”

  “Hey, I’ve never seen this number before. Did you get a cell phone?”

  I don’t have strength enough to speak, so I get down to the point, and hang up.

  57. Just as I expected, no one wrote. As usual.

  58. My eyes fly open at the sound of the woman opening the door and coming in. As soon as she enters, she says she walked for a very long time because she had difficulty finding a mailbox, and hands me a packet of medicine and asks me how I’m feeling. She’s like a mother. Now that I think about it, she seems like a pretty decent person. She takes out some food from a sack and spreads it out on the floor, saying that people should eat well when they’re sick. There’s food for Wajo, of course, plus steaming bowls of rice and takeout soup and stew from a restaurant. I feel as though I’ve been invited to a feast. Feeling in a rush, I’m about to pour the medicine into my mouth when she takes the packet away.

  “Don’t you know that you’re supposed to take medicine after a meal?” she says.

  She lifts the blanket off of me, forces me to sit up, and leaves the room. The smell of the food stirs up my appetite. My mouth waters, and I feel invigorated. I eagerly wield my chopsticks as though I’ve been starving for days. I did skip a few meals, after all. Wajo, too, wolfs down his share in the blink of an eye. Only after the frantic binge does it occur to me that I haven’t even said a word of gratitude to the woman. Should I have left some food for her? The Styrofoam dishes are spotless, as though they’ve been licked clean.

  59. I’ve taken the medicine and am putting the empty dishes away when the woman comes in again. But she isn’t just coming in. She’s moving into my room, bringing all her stuff with her.

  The receptionist pokes her head in behind her and says, “You should’ve done that from the beginning. You’re staying just till noon tomorrow, right?”

  I tell her yes, for now. The receptionist curls her lips, certain that we’re a couple and had used separate rooms only because we’d had a fight. The woman must have read the same look on the receptionist’s face, for she starts to rattle off what sounds like excuses that I may not feel offended.

  “I thought it made sense to share a room since I don’t have enough money for a room. We’re not a couple anyway, so it doesn’t matter, right?”

  For a moment, I find myself questioning her kindness earlier on. She hadn’t brought me food and medicine without reason. Still, I can’t be heartless and tell her to get out of my room right now. I’m not so shameless that I can just ignore her kindness, and I understand her situation well enough as a fellow traveler. We’re not a couple anyway, so nothing would happen between us, and assuming that nothing happens, there’s no problem sharing a room. It would be senseless for us to use separate rooms, when we’re travelers who can’t afford to waste a single coin. Besides, this room is big and spacious enough for two people to share, so we can’t use the excuse that it’s too small.

  A problem to be solved must be viewed from different angles. It may not be all right, precisely because we’re not a couple. No, regardless of whether or not we’re a couple, I don’t understand how the woman and I have come to share a room. We’ve probably come to this point by taking turns owing each other and paying each other back.

  She seems to sense that I feel uncomfortable, for she says in a small voice, “I’ll stay quietly by Wajo.”

  60. The woman, who has been sitting quietly next to Wajo, takes a twelve-inch laptop out of her backpack. While waiting for it to start up, she takes a charger out of her backpack, plugs it in into an outlet, and puts her cell phone on it.

  She checks the charger to see if the red light is on, and checks on me, asking, “Don’t you want desperately to be home when you’re sick? Why don’t you go home, if it’s too much to bear?” she asks.

  “I can’t,” I say.

  “Don’t you have a home?”

  “Being sick isn’t reason enough to go home.”

  I wrap the blanket around myself like a cocoon.

  “What would be reason enough to go home?”

  “A letter.”

  “A reply, you mean?”

  I nod my head quietly.

  “You haven’t gotten a single reply yet?” she asks.

  Again, I nod my head quietly. She looks a little surprised.

  “Do you write every day?” she asks.

  “Sometimes I can’t, but I try to write every day. Like in a journal.”

  “You must have more friends than meets the eye, since you have so many people to write.”

  “What?” I demand sharply.

  “All right, I’m sorry. I’m sure you don’t write the same person every day, so who do you usually write? Friends? A girlfriend?”

  I wasn’t going to answer, but change my mind.

  “I write 2, I write my family, I write 149, I write my friend, I write 327, I write my co-workers, and I also write 502. I write someone different every day,” I say.

  When the laptop has booted up, the woman puts her fingers on the touchpad and moves the cursor. When she clicks a file in a yellow folder, quiet and serene New Age music flows out. I begin to relax. Next, she hooks up her digital camera to the laptop and transfers the photos she took today to the hard drive. Then she gets on the Internet. She continues to ask me questions while staring into the little screen.

  “The numbers you just listed. They have something to do with the number 751, don’t they?” she asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “I was curious. I thought there must be some kind of a law or principle, even if there’s no meaning. How are they related to you, 0? Are they people you met while traveling?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So I’m the 751st person you’ve met?”

  I nod.

  “So I’m the last one so far, aren’t I?”

  “I can’t wait to meet the next number. It might be a beautiful girl. Someone I’m destined to meet.”

  “Or it could be a notorious murderer,” she says, lifting her shoulders slightly as though she has goose bumps.

  “Do you have to say things like that?”

  “You should talk.”

  “Huh!”

  “Why do you put numbers to people? People aren’t cars, you know.”

  “Numbers are easy to remember, convenient, and don’t overlap since they’re infinite, and they’re automatically put in order. Same names may exist, but not same numbers.”

  “To me it seems harder. Aren’t names easier to remember?”

  Ever since I was little, I’ve always been good at numbers and liked nu
mbers, probably because I take after my parents. In addition, I have an excellent memory and remember perfectly everything I’ve seen. In particular, I have an extraordinary ability to memorize and recall anything with numbers. Even my brother, considered a prodigy, did not have a memory that surpassed mine. That’s when I felt for the first time that God was fair. I wasn’t able to speak without effort, but I could remember things without effort. But when I tried to put the things I remembered effortlessly into effortlessly spoken words, my mind became muddled before I knew it, and I couldn’t say anything at all. Remembering something and putting what I remembered into words were different things altogether, belonging to different realms.

  The reason why I like numbers is because numbers, at least, don’t lie. They have a clear, definite, sure answer. They don’t make you suspect anything else. That’s why I have a habit of reducing everything to a number and calling it by that number. Something that’s been reduced to a number can never be forgotten. Things that can’t be forgotten don’t betray or lie, at least not while they remain unforgotten. If people can call everything by a number or explain everything through a number like I do, there will be no misunderstanding or misperception. If to everyone father was 1 and mother 2, older brother 3 and younger sister 4, no one would expect or demand of them anything more than the numbers. But because they were never 1 or 2, they had no clear answers. So even if you lived with them all your life, you couldn’t understand them, and they didn’t give you any answers. Things will probably remain the same in the future. For they couldn’t be called by a number, and neither should they.

  “That reminds me of something a physicist said. That if an entire book were written in numbers, it would be the truth. If, like you said, 0, a desk was called 12, and a cat 45, language wouldn’t be necessary, would it?” the woman says.